Report Times

[warwicks]

Hi,

I dont know if anybody can help but here goes.

Where I work we have to report 1.5 hours before departure for our pre flight briefing and preparing the aircraft. Some of our days are very long and therefore we are short on hours which inevitably means we go into discretion.

However where we work we go on the PILOTS report time which is half hour after ours. This can mean sometimes when the commander is enforcing his/her crew into discretion by 2 hours it is really 2.5 hours which is not allowed.

Are airlines legally allowed to knock this half hour off our Flight Duty Period and put our report time at the pilots time?

Any help/ advice would be great.

Thanks :) :)

[BOAC]

Difficult to answer, not knowing your ops manual, but:

1) C/crew NORMALLY have 1 hour extra available FDP over flight crew.

2) If I understand your post to mean that the Captain is exercising 2 hour's discretion for flight deck, he is therefore exercising only 1 hour for c/crew. If, however, you 'lose' 30 minutes at report as you state (seems odd!), you will therefore be technically 1:30 into discretion.

Still 'legal', as, incidentally, is 3 hours discretion exercised before or during the last sector, this making your '2:30' discretion legal (in UK).

therefore we are short on hours which inevitably means we go into discretion. - if this is true, you need to notify your regulatory authority. It is not allowed.

[warwicks]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.
We have been told that the flight deck can only exercise 2 hours discretion over us on the first sector from the UK and 3 hours on second second sector (IB)- what is happening however is they exercise the 2 hours but we lose half hour as CREW report time is put back eg.

Crew Report- 0600
Flight Deck Report- 0630

When looking how far into discretion we as crew are the flight deck and crewing say we reported at 0630 (when we have to be at work and ready for briefing at 0600)

:)
It just seems strange that they can add this extra half an hour to our duty time- expecially on something like a SSH, LXR, PFO or early bird reports this makes the difference between a legal or illegal day.

[Psr777]

Again without knowing your company's interpretation of CAP371, you aren't actually losing the 30 minutes duty time.

What happens is that your maximum FDP is based upon the flight crew's report time, not yours. Your 30 mins still count towards your total duty hours, but those hours are based on the time the flight crew report for duty....:confused: :confused:

ERM... I think! Take a look at your General Manual Part A, or your flight time limitations handbook (if you have one).

[BOAC]

Your para 1 is correct as I said.

Re para 2: as I also said, you will be 1:30 into discretion. C/crew are normally 1 hour 'in hand' on flight deck - but you 'apparently' lose 30 minutes of that. That is assuming your roster says 'report 0600'. If it says, '06:30' then you are only 1 hour 'in'. If there is an unwritten rule that you report 30 mins early, get it in writing or get it reported, BUT remember most crew will get in ahead of report anyway as there is always not quite enough time.

As far as your last line goes, I'm sorry but that is plainly nonsensethis makes the difference between a legal or illegal day. - the report is either 0600 or 0630. If it is 0630 and you arrive early that does not constitute an 'illegal day'. The whole system of Flt Time limitations is based on the report time declared by the company in the Ops manual. What is that in your case? Getting in 'early' does not legally eat into your available FDP.

Flight deck will normally always be further into discretion than cabin crew.

Lastly if the trips are REGULARLY operating into discretion, the ?CAA? will want to know and will ?hopefully? insist on a change of trip pattern. I believe the cut-off is around 30% going into discretion.

[sickBocks]

Any duty that goes over 2hrs discretion has to be reported to the CAA.
Eventually, they will pick up the trend and have a chat with the operator.

However this may take time and the following link can be followed to 'help out' the situation

www.chirp.co.uk

Hope this helps

sB :ok:

[warwicks]

Thanks to you guys for your replies.

Sorry if I seemed a little stupid- don't get across exactly what I am trying to say sometimes.
With the fact pilots would be more "out of hours" than us I understand it is just on our egypt flights they often get off which is where we end up being into discretion but they get a nice trip- using legal and illegal days was probably the wrong terminology.

All your answers have helped me out in understanding things (companies can be vague when they need a crew member to operate a flight about all the legalities)

Hope you all have a good week :)